Hunter

by Mercedes Lackey

  Hunters eat a lot. We burn a tremendous amount of calories. But there would have to be a couple hundred Hunters here to eat all this. And already I missed home food. Still, it was food, and there had been times when I would have eaten a brick if someone had buttered it first.

  Karly was waiting for me at a table for two over at the far side of the room, against the wall. We had a good view of the room, without being out in front of everyone. Once we were seated, and I started eating, I noted the dozen or more cameras covering every angle. I was going to have to figure this out somehow. Were people just so bored that watching Hunters eat was entertaining?

  “Why do they vid all the time?” I asked. I wanted to hear this from someone other than Armorer Kent. Maybe Karly would have an explanation that added something.

  “So they make sure to catch it if anything interesting happens,” Karly replied, and chuckled. “About ninety percent of it just gets chucked out. You’ll get used to it. After a while you don’t even notice the cams.”

  I was not at all sure about that.

  There were a few people already here, and I tried to look them over without being obvious. I was pretty sure they were doing the same to me. “What are the others like? Are there Elite here?” I asked, my voice urgent. “I’ve—” Here came the lie. “I’m not used to being around other Hunters.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” She chuckled, amused at my anxiety. “You’ll see. Just relax, be yourself, and everything will be all right. And yes, the Elite live here too, but we don’t see them too often, except for Kent.”

  Armorer Kent was Elite! I restrained myself and concentrated on my questions. Everything the armorer had told me seemed to be accurate so far, but I still had more questions. I bombarded Karly with them; what did it mean that she was my mentor? How long would that go on? Were there any other candidates here now or was everyone a full Hunter? After Karly had gotten about halfway through a big slab of what looked like vat-beef, she started talking in a low voice about the other Hunters that were here, eating. “Red, white, and blue: Hunter Lars. Lars is a practical joker but he means well. Purple, black, and red: Hunter Bendel. If Bendel weren’t a Hunter, he’d probably be out doing something else stupidly dangerous. Blue, light blue, and gray: Hunter Garent. Garent is always trying out new magic spells, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. White, gold, and silver: Hunter White Knight. He’s a Christer, and we tend to use that name for him rather than his real one.”

  Hunter Knight stood out in the room, not only because of his colors, but because he was a very tall and muscular man despite the fact that he didn’t look much older than me. He sat alone, and his white outfit featured an enormous gold and silver cross on the front and back. “Subtle,” I said dryly. “I would never have guessed.”

  Karly smothered a snicker in a bread roll. “I’ve got no problem with him. Does his job, never shirks, and if he wants to harbor the delusion that his Hounds are Angels and it isn’t magic he’s doing but wielding Holy God-power, well, whatever gets the Othersiders dead works for me. He’s not real popular with most of the others, though.”

  I could understand that. The Christers I knew only grudgingly accepted the protection of the Mountain, and they all seemed to cherish a bitter disappointment that the Diseray hadn’t been the Apocalypse, and they hadn’t gotten sucked up to Heaven. Kind of hard to blame them, when the world fell to pieces like they’d been told it would, but then none of the “good” parts happened like they’d been told they would, and they were left to stew with the rest of us unbelievers. The monks had pointed that out to me a couple of times, after I’d saved the Christers’ bacon only to get sniffed at and looked down on. And also my own mentor had remarked that, given that no one had gotten whisked away by angels, that left them with two equally unpalatable conclusions: either all their prophets and books had lied to them, or they were all just as unworthy and sinful as us unbelievers. No good choices there, either way, for a true believer.

  I didn’t have to wonder which camp Hunter Knight was in. He’d be in the “unworthy” camp, or he wouldn’t be here, wearing that cross. This was probably his idea of penance, or maybe of making himself worthy. He didn’t look more than two or three years older than me, maybe less, very blond, and very uncomfortable in his own skin.

  “And here comes trouble,” Karly breathed as five Hunters entered in a group, with one of the tiny hovering cameras I’d heard of, but never seen before, and a reporter who was wearing a screaming red outfit.

  The Hunter talking to the reporter wore gold, red, and white. His white-blond hair was very long, and threaded with gold, red, and white feathers on one side. He even had a gold, red, and white starburst painted around one eye on the same side as the feathers. Not even the paint and the feathers could hide the fact that he was stunningly handsome, and I realized I had been seeing him, off and on, on the news feeds from Apex for the last several years. And here I had thought he was some sort of rockster, and not a Hunter at all.

  “…not what I would call a rival,” he was saying to the woman in red, who wasn’t quite simpering at him. “She said herself it was all the doing of our brave soldiers in the armored car, that all she did was distract the Othersiders until they had a good shot. That’s not exactly Hunting, now, is it?”

  I realized, of course, that this was Ace and he was talking about me. Presumably cameras were even now trying to get my reaction to his words. I kept my expression bland, and looked at Karly rather than Ace. “Who else is in his pack?” I asked.

  She smothered another snicker. “Pack. Good one. Rose, pink, and white is Hunter Cielle, who would very much like the world to think Ace adores her. Yellow, brown, and cream is Hunter Raynd. Green, blue, and silver is Hunter Bithen. Green, pale green, and yellow is Hunter Paules, Ace’s younger brother, practically his shadow. See one, the other will be somewhere around. Orange, brown, and black is Hunter Tober.”

  Cielle was as pretty as Ace was stunning, her hair dyed pink to match her colors. Raynd was a haughty-faced, dark-haired, dark-skinned woman. Bithen was dark, bald, and sardonic, but I suspected that bald was a choice rather than genetics. Paules was a faded copy of Ace. Tober’s hair might also have been dyed black to match his outfit; like Ace, he had feathers of his other two colors threaded into his hair.

  Ace concluded his interview—which he had very much dominated—and sent the woman in red off with a wink that made her simper even more. Then he turned and scanned the room. And spotted me.

  Oh great.

  Don’t make any enemies, I reminded myself. Or, at least, don’t make any that haven’t already made up their minds. This wasn’t my first go-round with bullies. Even in the Monastery, kids turn up who are bullies, and sometimes it takes a while for the monks to weed them out or teach them civilized behavior. So even though my insides tensed up and I could feel adrenaline start buzzing through my system, I defaulted to my training when it came to situations like this. Don’t be the one that acts. Be the one that takes that energy and turns it against the attacker.

  He headed straight for us. No point in pretending not to notice. I sat up a little straighter and put on the blandest expression I could manage.

  “So,” he said sarcastically. “This is the new nova-star that’s going to knock me off the number one spot. And what would be your name, now, turnip?”

  I blinked at him mildly. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Senior Hunter Ace. My name is Joyeaux.”

  He tapped his chin as if he was trying to think of something. “Joyeaux, Joyeaux…something. Oh yes. Charmand. Nepotism, much?”

  I clamped down on my temper. If I got too angry, my Hounds just might decide to cross on their own…which would be painful and inconvenient at best, and which Ace could decide was aggressive behavior at worst. “I don’t think so, Senior Hunter,” I said, truthfully. “I’d really rather not be here. Until today, I hadn’t seen the prefect since I was four or five. And Apex City is amazing, but I’d really rather be at h
ome. In fact, I told Prefect Charmand that I would rather stay and Hunt for the folk I’ve lived with most of my life, but he made me understand it was important that I come here.”

  He stared at me for a moment as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Then he barked a laugh. “I think you actually mean that!”

  “I do, Senior Hunter,” I replied very quietly, now holding back a surge of horrible homesickness instead of anger. “But since I’m here, I don’t want to knock anybody anywhere. I just want to Hunt and get on.”

  He brought his face down to mine, snarling a little. “Well, if you want to get on, you’d better start talking about how you took out that Folk lord. Nobody’s ever done that but a full Elite team.” He nodded at my start. “That’s right, the rest of the world thinks it was just Drakken and Gogs, but we got the real feed here. We know what you did—”

  “Ace,” Karly said, warning in her tone. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

  “No—wait!” I interrupted, holding up my hand. “I guess it wasn’t obvious from the feed. It’s not that big a deal. The…Othersider wasn’t dropped, he ran off. I told the truth: it wasn’t me that chased him off, it was the Hellfires. And if you want to know what I did, I’ll show you right here and now, but I don’t know if the trick is ever going to work twice.”

  Ace was completely taken aback, which was something of a relief—and by this point everyone in the mess hall had started to gather around us. Good. Now he’d have a harder time trying to bully me. “Trick?” he said suspiciously.

  I nodded. “Trick,” I replied. “Where I come from, we don’t have Hellfires or anything techy, so we have to learn how to use the least magic to get the most result. Look, I said I’d show you, and I can do that right now. Can one of you make a Wall or at least a Shield? It doesn’t have to be Folk-strong, just enough for me to show what I did.”

  Ace looked around at his friends, but it was Knight who stepped forward. “I’ll make one,” he rumbled. He bowed his head for a moment and muttered something prayerful under his breath, and a good, strong Shield rose up around him.

  “Right,” I said, and stood up. “Look, this is what I did. Only I did it fast. This time, I’ll do it real slow so you can all see everything.”

  I sketched out the Glyphs in the air that I would normally form only in my mind, and set that abrasive little spell to grinding away at Knight’s shield. “You see? Just a little, little magic. Slow, subtle.” I deliberately glowed it, to make it more visible, so you could see that there was something like a spinning disk right at belt-buckle level to Knight, and that it was etching its way through his Shield. “The Folk have got so much power that doing something small never even occurs to them, and this kind of thing just gets right in under their noses. If I’d tried blasting at his Wall, he’d only have made it stronger, or deflected what I was doing, or just kept making new layers of Wall under the old ones. Instead, I just nattered for time, and let this grind away until I had a hole for the Hellfires. Then we all ducked.” I shrugged. “Not exactly heroic, diving for cover under a pile of Hounds.”

  They were all gaping at me as if this approach was something that had never even occurred to them, either.

  “Like I said…I wouldn’t count on this working twice, or at least, not in the same way. It depends on if the Folk Mage figured out what I did, and if he tells someone else,” I continued apologetically.

  But at this point all the others were crowding in close, wanting to see it again. Knight stepped back, obviously uncomfortable now, and Ace took over the situation, ordering someone else to give me a Shield to grind. I let him. This allowed him to be the boss and get center stage again. If he wanted it that badly, I’d let him have it.

  I repeated the spell more times before everyone was satisfied. Ace was now grinning as if I was a pet that had performed a particularly clever trick. When everyone had gone back to their tables (and I was hungry all over again) he reached out to me in a way that I read as non-threatening. I was right, he just mussed my hair a little, like you’d do with a youngster. “Not bad, kid,” he said patronizingly. “Not bad at all. Thanks for the tip.”

  Like I said, I know bullies. Deflect, deflect, make them think they got their way even when they didn’t, but never actually give in to them. Become innocuous, not worth tormenting or thinking about. Become the landscape, so Kedo put it. “My pleasure, Senior Hunter,” I said deferentially as he walked away, heading for the serving line. I waited until he’d gotten what he wanted, then went back for something to replace the energy I’d expended.

  Karly came with me, though all she got was a sweet of some kind. When we sat back down, she was looking at me with a skeptical expression. I shrugged. “Deflection is more efficient than opposition,” I said, quoting Master Kedo.

  Surprisingly, she smiled. “All right. I was just hoping you weren’t a coward.”

  I felt a little smoldering anger again. “If he ever actually picks a fight with me, I’ll gladly assist his energies into a Folk-forsaken wall,” I replied shortly. “I’d just rather not have to waste my time.”

  Now she grinned. “Finish up. I’ll show you the way to your room. Your Perscom can take you from there.”

  It seemed there was something called a “residential section,” and that was where we all had rooms. Well, I had expected a “room,” but when my Perscom unlocked the door for me, it looked like what they gave us were what used to be called “apartments,” a set of rooms for one person. A lot more than what I was used to.

  I wandered around it for at least thirty minutes, marveling. It was…oh, more luxury than I had ever seen in my entire life.

  I even had my own bathroom, which was the first thing I’d seen so far that made me like being here.

  The three rooms were all decorated in the same shades of gray, and finally it dawned on me that these were my “colors,” and how had they managed to do all that? It baffled—and in truth kind of scared me a little. People just weren’t supposed to devote that much care and attention to any one person.

  I’ll admit it, though, it was really seductive. The shelves in the bathroom were loaded with all sorts of scents and lotions and cosmetics. There was a cool-unit in the same room that had the vid-unit, a couch, a couple of chairs, and a couple of little tables with some vaguely abstract objects on them. The cool-unit had bottles of chilled water and fruit and sweets, and over it was a cabinet with wasabi peas and nuts and things in jars, a thing that gave me instant boiling-hot water, and some canisters of herbal teas and a brown powder that I tasted and discovered was the powder they made that Chocolike out of. Nice.

  There was a second vid-screen in the bedroom; the bedroom itself was much, much bigger than my little room at the Monastery. My bedroom back home was just barely big enough for my bed and the chest that held my clothes. This room was not quite big enough to feel too big. The bed was large enough for two people—or four, if you were a family trying to sleep warm that night. There was plenty of room around the bed to walk, and there were little tables on either side of the headboard. The vid-screen was mounted on the wall across from the foot of the bed. The bed itself looked like a futon, but it was made of something else entirely. I didn’t know what it was, but it yielded to me, then supported me, just like that chair had, and there was a charcoal-gray blanket made of the same soft stuff that the cocoons in the train had been made of. Obviously no one would actually need a blanket here, since this was a building where the temperature never varied, so the only reason it was there was for the look and feel. The closet (which was about the size of my old bedroom at home), to my intense relief, had all my old clothes (including the outfit I had changed out of in the washroom, all cleaned and hung up), but in front, to my discomfort, there was three times that much in brand-new stuff in my colors—some obviously Hunting gear, but some…well, it looked as if someone had decided I needed a whole lot more clothing than I remembered choosing. More unease. More feeling of wrongness, of Koyaanisqatsi—“
life out of balance.”

  The first thing I did was take a good long hot shower, and while I was doing that, carefully sampled the soaps and scents, ending up rejecting most of them. Hey, I like smelling nice; I just want to smell the way I want to smell. I found a lotion I liked: simple, herbal. The makeup kind of tempted me—who doesn’t like to look pretty?—but I didn’t know how to use it. I’d figure it out later. It wasn’t anything like the homemade stuff we had back home.

  This was an upside-down version of what my evening would have been at home. There would have been a very simple meal with the Masters and the monks and the other Hunters, and we’d all eat the same thing. Everyone but the Hunters took turns cooking and cleaning up; even if you hadn’t run into any Othersiders that day, patrolling was hard work, and in winter, it was harder still, so we were let off from doing most chore work. Then we’d all go down to the community hall to see if there was vid we were supposed to watch, and if not, there’d be some music, maybe, or someone would pick an hour or so of programming, or we’d play one of the old vids from the library or new ones from the mail. I’d talk with my friends, or we’d play a game. A lot of the girls brought fancywork with them, since the lights at the community hall were better than the ones in most peoples’ houses. The Hunters would mostly leave early; we needed sleep as much as we needed food. Since the Monastery and our village, Safehaven, is above the snow line and it was always cold, I’d pick up a warming pan and get some coals from the fire at the entrance to the cells and stick it in my bed while I got undressed. In winter I tended to go straight to sleep, but in summer, sometimes I would lie awake a while, and look out my window. Sometimes there was a moon and stars. Sometimes there was a storm. Always there was the snow, that promise that nothing much would dare come up here.

  But, like I said…upside down. I turned off all the lights in the other rooms, pulled on the pair of soft pants and top that had been waiting for me on the bed, got a bottle of water, and turned on the vid. Even though it felt really, really strange to be watching vid all alone, and to be watching vid and not have to think about how much power it was going to use. Because I wanted to get to the bottom of something.